In early October, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders were in violation of the state’s constitution and ordered her to stop. The governor is restricting rights using the state’s public health code. Attorneys David Kallman and Erin Mersino say the code does not allow the interference with private business practice. Kallman and Mersino are prepared to take their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kallman represents Semlow Peak Performance Chiropractic in Grand Haven, MI. They want to allow employees to decide for themselves whether or not they want to mask up. The state has shut down the practice. Mersino is filing her case in federal court on First Amendment grounds on behalf of Resurrection Catholic School and parents of students.  The state requires the school to discipline students for not wearing masks. One student has a breathing disability and the others, siblings, have speech challenges.  The children are not allowed back in school unless they agree to wear masks for the 7-hour day. Mersino says the statute violates freedom of religion and interferes with the children’s right to an education.

Donate to support their work: https://greatlakesjc.org

Rebekah Bernard joins the show to discuss her book Patients at Risk:  The Rise of the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant in Health Care. Bernard examines the death of a patient who died after a misdiagnosis by a mid-level practitioner at a multi-billion-dollar health care facility.

More and more, health care operations are relying on providers who receive less than half the clinical training and education than physicians.  Some hospital systems have fired physicians and replaced them with nurse practitioners and physician assistants.  While this is intended to improve access and drive down costs, Rebekah Bernard argues that has not been the case and, in some cases has put patients at risk.

Rebekah Bernard discusses:

1.  What her book is about and why she wrote it

2. The American Medical Associations efforts to keep competitors out

3. Underserved areas, rural, urban

4. What is “full practice authority” and the fees nurse practitioners must pay. Is it fair?

5. What about physicians’ assistants?

6. Should physicians be doing the more complicated care?

7. Is there any role for nurse practitioners in a free market?

8. Transparency of hospital prices… does this sound like a similar argument?

9. In a free market, would we be having this discussion?

10. Physicians for patient protection website:  https://www.physiciansforpatientprotection.org

President Donald Trump officially has COVID-19. The First Lady and a number of his staff were also infected. President Trump was admitted into the hospital one day after the announcement and released three days later. Dr. Jane Orient talks about the course of these events, what has been a surprise and some of the possible reasons behind his care.

Dr. Orient also discusses how surprising is it that Trump got infected in the first place, how hydroxychloroquine may have helped him if he was continuing treatment, the use of two experimental anti-viral drugs when he was in the hospital and how his case may show the public that COVID is a virus that is manageable.

The United States is ranked 11th highest in the world for COVID-19 deaths. Why? What are developing countries doing that the U.S. is not? Dr. Elizabeth Vliet discusses a number of factors, most notably, the stubbornness of the medical establishment and government regulators against hydroxychloroquine. Vliet discusses how COVID patients with the right protocol have a better chance of success staying at home rather than going to the hospital and how healthy people can protect themselves in more effective and better ways than wearing recycled masks.

Dr. Vliet answers:

- Why the U.S. is ranked #11 in COVID deaths

- How at home treatment for COVID works

- Dr. Peter McCullough’s work at Baylor University, how hydroxychloroquine is helping health care workers from getting sick

- Why physicians are afraid to use hydroxychloroquine

- How masks can make people sick

- The push for vaccines

- If the U.S had more of a free health care market, if it would be in the mess that it is today

Christina Herrin, government relations manager of health policy, interviews Amber Freed, mother, activist, and founder of SLC6A1 Connect. The prevalence of rare diseases in the U.S. is growing. Nearly 1 out of 10 Americans suffer from a rare disease. For the Freed family and Maxwell her son, time is of the essence to find a cure for SLC6A1. The discussion focuses on rare diseases, finding a cure, and obstacles to bringing new cures to market.

Social Media Handles:  LinkedIn:  SLC6A1 Connect, Amber Freed, Instagram:  Milestones_For_Maxwell, Facebook:  SLC6A1 Connect, Twitter:  Maxs_Milestones

LinkedIn

o   Hashtags/References:  @Amber Freed, #SLC6A1, #SLC6A1Connect, #GeneTherapy, #FightLikeAMother, #RareDisease

Donate here:  https://slc6a1connect.org/donate-here/

Video of our story:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbNXxMJ4xW8&feature=youtu.be

Facebook

o   Follow & Tag:  SLC6A1 Connect

Donate here:  https://slc6a1connect.org/donate-here/

Video of our story:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbNXxMJ4xW8&feature=youtu.be

Instagram

o   Follow & Tag:  Milestones_For_Maxwell

o   Hashtag:  #SLC6A1 #SLC6A1Connect #Ellen

Twitter

o   Follow & Tag:   Maxs_Milestones

Jane Orient, M.D. explains that there is probably a simple explanation for the rise in cases after mask mandates, but universal mask mandates do present some risks.  Orient explains the concern about sick people re-infecting themselves while wearing a mask, how masks are causing headaches and perhaps fatal consequences for individuals engaged in strenuous physical activity.  Orient talks about the benefits of fresh air and how it was used to help recovering patients in the 1918 flu pandemic.  And last but not least, what seems to be driving “mask mania.”

Christina Herrin, director of Free to Choose Medicine, interviews Meryl Nass, M.D. on COVID-19 related treatments and government red tape limiting options for patients. Patients and doctors deserve the right to make decisions about health care without big brother in the exam room. Dr. Nass points to the barriers preventing proper patient treatment and discusses how we can improve upon the antiquated FDA regulatory system.

Scott Brooks, Tyson Foods senior vice president of Food Safety and Quality Assurance, and Dr. Daniel Castillo, chief medical officer at Matrix Medical Network, discuss the use of data science to stay ahead of the COVID-19. The two explain how the program will work, the team Tyson has hired to support the program, whether such a program has been used before, how Tyson will measure success, the possibility of false results, contact tracing and how the workforce is responding to the program.

Dr. Castillo discusses whether such a program could work in other large settings such as college campuses, sport teams, gyms and other large institutions. Brooks also discusses Tyson’s experience with COVID so far (less than 1 percent of workforce have an active case) and how large employers are managing the human resource concerns of the pandemic.

Health Care News Managing Editor AnneMarie Schieber and guest Elaine Parker Parker discuss the content on FlattenTheFear.com, why it was launched, and why it focuses particularly on reopening schools. The podcast also discusses other pandemic related fears facing small business: lawsuits -- where they are coming from, and whether business owners can protect themselves.

Parker also discusses the toxic political climate and how businesses are fending off the potential of boycotts or vandalism if they don’t support a political point of view. Finally, she talks about the response in Congress, the CARES Act and PPP.

The guest was incorrectly identified in the beginning as Edwin Haas.  The correct name is Erwin Haas. Our apologies. 

Erwin Haas joins the show to discuss why four percent of confirmed COVID tests could be false positives. Four percent is a conservative estimate for diagnostic tests and even at that, as many as two million are led to believe they have COVID and do not.  Worse, public health authorities are using these false results to do contact tracing of asymptomatic individuals in which they perpetuate the false positive cycle by encouraging them to get tested.

Haas wrote about his findings in the American Thinker, July 21. In the podcast, Haas also discusses false negatives, which he estimates at around 600,000, why there are so many tests now on the market, why test companies have little incentive to guarantee the validity of their tests, how politicians are exploiting the testing data, and why deaths in nursing homes are a poor measure of disease death (average life expectancy in a nursing home is 5 months).